Atomic.edu: Not all beer and skittles

Chris Taylor ponders the rigours and distractions of university life...

Tis that time of the year again – universities around the nation have just gotten back into the swing of things. And, in turn, many a first year student has just endured their first week or two in the big bad world of tertiary education. If you’re in that situation, this here is your survival guide.

Boobs, beer and tribunals
While TAFE may, at times, feel like quite the glorified secondary school, university is different. The university system is all about self-sufficiency. No one is going to make you come to class. No ones going to keep reminding you to do your readings, to ensure you keep pace with your classmates, to do your bloody assignments. And you will be hit with assignments within weeks of starting university. Hell, by the time you read this, you’re probably already looking at two or three. It’s oh-so-easy to just slack off in university. In most courses, at least, little is demanded of you by way of contact hours. The readings are quite often horrendous-dull, drab works penned by academics that couldn’t communicate clearly if the life of a cute bunny rabbit depended on it. And, too, the campus itself is probably a helluva lot more interesting than the school you just left. There’s a greater variety of food, an on-campus pub and, yes, quite the oversupply of members of your preferred gender(s) wandering about – this last point being especially relevant to those of you who’ve emerged from a half dozen years at a single sex school. Don’t get caught up in all this stuff.

It’s fun, to be sure, but allow us to put it plainly – if you screw up, there’s no one who’s going to catch you. Certainly, if you fail core units you can repeat them, but do this too often and you will find your arse hauled in front of a tribunal so you can justify to the university exactly why they should continue wasting their time on you.

The game changes
The above advice applies equally to all – from arts students to future dentists to you, the IT padawan that’s just started university. With IT, though, you’ve even more differences between the university system and secondary school to get your head around. Presumably, if you were given the option, you took some sort of computing subject in your final year of schooling. Maybe it covered a little coding – Visual Basic, Java, maybe something like Robo Inventor. You might’ve been okay at it, walking away with decent marks. Don’t assume you’ll be able to do the same as easily in university.

Here, coding isn’t really taught per se. You’re given the theory and, every week or so, a few new instructions you can play with, but there’s none of this line-by-line, here’s how we get Visual Basic to do x business. You need to think for yourself. You need to devote a helluva lot of your spare time to pouring over your notes, reading the textbooks – and recommended readings, too, if the assigned textbook is shit or if it’s an especially difficult week – and just fiddling around in Java, C++ or whatever language you’re supposed to be learning. On that note, the lecturers of most first year units will tell you they’ve assumed no knowledge on your part. When it comes to programming units, at least, they’re lying. They all are. Well, okay, they don’t assume knowledge as such, its more that they move at a pace that will see you – unless you’re really quick or, yes, have prior experience with the language – overwhelmed.

Perhaps it’s a bit late now – what, with the semester already having started – but in the weeks leading up to you starting a programming unit, its always worth having a crack at the lessons in one of those Learn XYZ in 21 Days books. The point isn’t to walk into the tutorial room knowing a lot of instructions. That’s really not necessary. What you do need, though, is to already be comfortable with the basics of the language. It’ll help you – and improve your results in assignments and exams – immensely.

Working on your problem solving skills is a worthwhile exercise too. Being able to solve problems will help you as much – if not more – as knowing a bit of the language. Also, in school, you probably noticed you could do very well working by your lonesome. This remains true for some people in university, but really, do your best to assemble a group of friends so, when you just don’t get something, you have people to ask for assistance.

In turn, you can help them with their problems. Yes, you will have tutors and lecturers to go to, but never underestimate the value of a fellow student’s advice. You will have units in which the lecturers and tutors are utterly incapable of helping anyone with anything. You’ll have no other option – assuming you want to pass – but to work with your classmates. Join IT-related student societies for this very reason. They’ll either be free or close enough. Trust us – you wont regret it. We do keep pointing out that you may have problems with textbooks and lecturers for a reason. In all fields – but maybe especially in IT – you’ll occasionally have to deal with crappy resources. There are ways around this.

If the textbook sucks, go see the lecturer – assuming they don’t suck – and see if they can recommend another one. Probably there’s already a list of good ones in the unit guide. And, obviously, if you’re having trouble with a specific area of a programming language, you can always just plant your arse down in the relevant section of the campus library and flick through books until you find one that’s suitable. If your lecturer sucks, you always have a tutor. If your tutor and lecturer happen to be one in the same, see if you can get moved to another tutorial. If your tutor and lecturer aren’t the same – bar the fact they both manage to be spectacularly useless – then your fellow students are the way to go. Hey, you’re a geek, right? And you’re a reader of Atomic. Post on our forums. And on other forums, too. A lot of people will be willing to help you out. And even if it’s 2AM – maybe especially if it's that time – you shouldn’t have to wait too long for a response.

In your first year especially it’s an absolute pain to find yourself dealing with a difficult unit that’s helmed by the worst staff the university managed to dig up, but believe it or not, it is in some ways beneficial. A learning experience. Once you get into the real world of the work place, you’ll find yourself having to deal with even worse excuses for humanity.

No matter the quality of the teaching staff and assigned resources, though, remember one thing – you’re not going to learn a programming language by simply reading or asking questions about it. You must practice. Do all the in-class tasks. Attempt all assignments as soon as you’re given them. Have a go at any and all examples in the books you read.

Don’t become a drone
Too many people – in their first year, at least – treat university as if it were school. They attend all the lectures and tutorials, but do little work at home. Or, if they do, they do only what their lecturers and tutors have asked off them. Usually, that’s enough to pass units. What they fail to grasp is that IT at university – or, hell, anything at university – is about more than learning how to complete assignments. If you’re only there to get HDs, youre missing the point.

University is meant to teach you how to think. You’re not only supposed to be self-sufficient enough to seek out a book better than the assigned text without prompting because you need it for the second assignment; you’re meant to become a well-rounded individual who, when faced with a problem, can think about it logically, laterally and critically, then seek out a solution.

A lot of people are able to get into university and finish a degree. And a lot of these people remain fools. You should be different. While you might be paying thousands – either now or a few years down the track care of HECS – to have some of the brightest academics pass on their knowledge to you, you must be prepared to study in your own time. Even if what you’re going to study isn’t going to be relevant to how you perform in the next assignment or the end-of-semester exam. On that note, do pick electives that aren’t related to IT. Once you’ve got the major and the minor – tassuming you’re doing one – worked out, ensure you leave some electives aside for other things; maybe a language or some sort of writing unit. You don’t want to end up like one of those god-awful lecturers. You must be – and this is especially true for those of you who’d like to work as something other than an academic – able to communicate effectively. Your ideas, brilliant as they may be, are worth little if you’re unable to share them with your fellow students and future co-workers.